Blue
by rockinfaerie
Summary: Sadness. Tranquility. Cold. Depth. Liberty. Secrecy. A lonely and guilt-wracked man comes to terms with his past and turns to face an uncertain future. An isolated girl evolves painfully into a cold and bitter woman, yet harbours a much-loved picture...
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling.

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**Blue by Rockinfaerie**

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**Chapter One: Survival**

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He wakes up slowly and the morning is soft; he inhales and a cool rush of salty air enters his nostrils.

This is the only tolerable moment of the day, when the gentle slap of the flat blue sea can be heard as its hits the old stone walls. Through the fluttering spaces between his eyelashes the brilliant sky dazzles. It glares in fragments through the wavering palms. His focus adjusts and he can hear the material flap of striped beach umbrellas. He does not turn but he knows they are striped and greying and tattered, like an old t-shirt from a distant past.

The sun is gloriously weak. But soon it will climb the sky and stretch out its rays and burn his skin and eyes and lips if he reveals himself to it. Worse, the strong sun will bring the people who unfailingly come to throng the seafront. First a trickle of plastic spade-wielders, then a clatter of deckchairs, until finally there is nowhere where there isn't people, and he must run, and hide himself away, for he can't bear their happy voices, their children's laughter.

It is early yet. Now he may stay. Stay for a little while. This is the great in-between, his senses beginning to sharpen but his thoughts too slow to register anything but hunger-pain. The rough uneven wood of the bench has been digging into his upper spine, disrupting his sleep. He is glad of it; this is preferable to deep slumber, which would seize its chance at any moment to propel him backwards into the warm wavering realms of once-known joy and suddenly, violently, return him afresh to this miserable scum-coated surface.

Slowly, stiffly, he sits up to the flares of early morning traffic and to the peeling ice-cream signs, his mouth as dry as the crumbling vanilla and chocolate that flakes onto the cracked grey concrete. Soon he must go elsewhere.

He knew, emerging from that thick black stifling fog of horror, that he could no longer live a sedentary lifestyle, with all its ritual and contemplation; his path has become that of an unmagical scavenging nomad, stripped to the instinctive fundamentals of eating and sleeping. An unending and difficult quest for food constantly dominates his thoughts, barring all others from registering. These days and months and years are spent wandering from town to town to village, rooting through dustbins of restaurant kitchens or raiding unattended chicken coops, remaining unacknowledged or reviled by all who pass him.

This is his existence, except for when the full moon turns to face him and then he must incarcerate himself into some remote pit, and his wolfish mind, once unleashed, tears through those mental barriers he has so persistently erected, savaging all that is behind; for subsequent days he is doomed to contend with these old shards of memory that appear before him, voices heard sharply in his ear as though beside him, all the smells and comforts and smiles of an old world that crumbled away from him. These rotten fruits of his self-imprisonment, though excruciating to behold, are yet not destructive to anyone else, and so their monthly invasion is silently justified. He has not lost that part of himself.

He stands and stretches his back which is bruised from the bench, and begins to walk by the thick uneven wall, casting his eye out to the sparkling blue, where white sails drift lazily towards the medieval quarter of the peninsula. The familiar acid grumblings in his stomach berate him. Soon he must go further into town, wandering the cool alleyways until the lunchtime of others, when the chance of tracking down an edible meal is at its highest. For the tanned beach-goers are starting to make themselves known, and he, with his dirty ghostly-pale skin, cannot possibly hope to remain inconspicuous. But, with its outdoor cafés and warm nights, this coastal region suits his current existence.

Perhaps too much.

He will move northwards; the biting snow and ice of a St Petersburg winter are inviting prospects to a body desirous of further pain.

A figure stands beside him, old veined hands resting on the wall and also looking out at the calm glittering expanse. He ignores human faces - disengagement from those around him has been key to his purposeful detachment from the life of his former self. But the figure is unusually tall for this region, and it is perhaps this factor more than any other that causes him to glance up. And in the instant of this glance he sees the distinctive profile - that crooked nose, that beard shining in the sun - and turns to move away, but the older man has gripped his arm firmly and, though he writhes to escape, will not let go.

"Remus", says the old man.

This familiar voice issues both respect and fear in his heart, bubbling through the stiff film formed above his emotions which he has dared not stir. Turning from the man, refusing to look, and yet aware of that powerful grip on his wasted wrist, he answers by way of a nod, suddenly aware that his current appearance might necessitate confirmation. Still he can say nothing; spoken language, along with social interaction, has been abandoned in pursuit of unfeeling.

But tears pool in the twenty-three-year-old's eyes at being addressed so, at hearing this real voice of the old days - from which he had once purposely fled, fearing his words of comfort, his attempts at encouragement, his pity...

The street has blurred and his eyes are hot and he looks at the irregular stones that compose the wall and still that hand holds his wrist, as though checking for life. And part of him wants to scream out that he is still here, still here, buried somewhere within that ravaged tormented Other. And so he does not resist as his old headmaster leads him from the uneven yellow wall to the shade of those cool hushing palms.

The older man's speech is strange to him at first - now the structures and expressions and modulations of his voice require effort to understand and follow. But as he hears these words and the compassion behind them, a part of his mind long kept dormant by shock becomes suddenly agitated and erupts, unleashing streams of sad knowledge into his famished soul. They sit on the parched brown grass and he accepts the cheese and loaf of bread offered to him. And he devours it, even eating the crumbs that have fallen into the dry mud between the roots of the bleached blades. As he does so, the blue eyes of the speaker survey his condition, his talk faltering, and trailing off into the warm Mediterranean air.

It is his turn to speak. The older man is expectant, and in indebted desperation he reaches into that turbulence which lies within his heart. He raises a hand to his stiff jaw, to the short scratchy beard there, and with a sudden movement forces that odd word from his dry throat.

"Today."

It comes out quietly, stiffly, rigid, and miserable.

Dumbledore understands. He nods, his kind eyes gently pressing him to continue. But for several moments Remus cannot. He waits as his mind elaborates what his mouth cannot do until the moment when he threatens to burst passes. When it does, he arranges the words in his mind, placing them in sequence in his mind's eye as though reforming a shattered image.

"It's..." he begins, forcing those jagged and familiar pieces from himself. "It's... his third birthday. Today." He looks at Dumbledore, tears crawling down his dry face as a jumble of forgotten emotions splash over uncontrollably and scald him. "He's three. Today."

And then he is no longer aware of what is being said and who is saying it, of what is being sobbed and who is sobbing it; he only knows that this shoulder is soft and solid and that from the shore come sounds of young laughter and the soft splash of low blue waves against the firm warm shore.

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**Author's note: This is "Blue" from what will hopefully one day be a Four House-Colours series - "Red" and "Green" are already up. **

**Please review to let me know what you think!**


	2. The First Return

Disclaimer: I'm not J.K. Rowling

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**Blue by**** Rockinfaerie**

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**The First Return**

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He wakes up slowly and the morning is soft; he inhales and a cool rush of salty air enters his nostrils

The forested landscape is obscured by darkness, but the smells linger as he steps over the threshold and into the hut; the smells, of moss and fallen rain and wet bark, that remind him of many happy nights of faint moon shadows. Since replying to the letter, he has deemed such reminiscences inevitable, but once inside the warm hut cannot but be amazed at how little it has changed; the smell of crinkled dog-hair in the cushions, the fire casting irregular pulsing flickers on the wooden beams...

And the way Hagrid still hasn't learned his own strength.

He rubs his sore shoulder vigorously as he sits down into the fireside armchair, and the gamekeeper bustles about with tea, speaking fast and excitedly about how good it is to see him again at last. He pushes a bowl-like cup into Remus' hands and adds milk to the steaming brew until it slops and overflows onto his lap, and sits down opposite him, chuckling as Fang leaps at him playfully. There are little blue blobs of flowers around the rim of the cup, which Remus suspects might have been painted by Hagrid himself, and traces their irregular outline while he awaits the inevitable question that comes after a moment's pause in Hagrid's cheerful monologue.

"So... what'yeh been up ter these days?"

He answers readily, but vaguely. Odd jobs. A bit of travelling, Lots of reading. That sort of thing.

The gamekeeper nods, lifting his own enormous cup to his beard and looks into the crackling fire. He picks up the sharp iron rod and stokes it, sending a flurry of sparks into the rug. Heat blasts against Remus' right cheek, and can feel it redden in the assault. Hagrid glances back at Remus, avoiding eye-contact, as though wondering how best to approach the subject that must be on his mind.

"So," Remus begins, keeping his voice light as he decides to do it for him, "Harry's here now. How has he been getting on?"

Hagrid sits back into the cushions of his armchair, beaming, the words tumbling from him as though suddenly released. "Oh, he's bin learnin' loads! Gets in patches o' bother now and then, but all in all he's a great lad. Plays Quidditch exactly like his dad used ter, and has a good pair of friends now too - one of em's a young Weasely - y'know that big ol' red-headed clan down by Ottery?"

Remus nods, gulping from his teacup.

"Now, he was a bih worried, I think, when he started out, 'cos..." Hagrid pauses for a moment, lifting his cup to his bearded mouth and staring at its rim, his friendly face narrowing. "Cos he didn't know nothin' bout magic, or nuthin..."

"What?" Remus asks sharply; he stares in disbelief over the spattering of flames.

"Nuthin." The half-giant looks up, and his black eyes are illuminated by the hot sparks, suddenly angry and vicious, and his voice has become a growl. "Nuthin' at all. Not even about his mum and dad an' all."

Remus starts forward from his seat, almost dropping the cup. It clatters loudly against the saucer and more tea overspills. He looks down into the pale milky puddle and then back at Hagrid's ruddy face, which now winces in recollection.

"Went to get him myself, from the Muggles - he wasn't gettin' his letters, y'see. The Muggles'd been runnin' away - and I found em' all in a damp ol' shack off the coast o'... not sure where." He looks back at Remus, seriously, sadly. "Knew Harry instantly, o'course - was lyin' on the hard floor, with nuthin' but a thin grotty sheet an' it freezin' an' all... An' his uncle didn't wan' me ter take him - said... they said..." He pauses, clearing his throat. "Said they'd beat it out o' him, the magic."

Hagrid draws a rainbow handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose loudly.

Remus sits very still, very empty. The fire now holds no warmth for him, and the thuds of Fang's padded paws against the muddy tiles fade from hearing. Those last words echo terrifyingly in his mind as though in a vast, unknown cavern. His hands tremble at this terrible injustice, of which he has remained shamefully ignorant. He shakily swills the last of his tea around his cup, watching it rush up the sides and fall again, and, lifting the cup to his lips forces his silent simmering anger to abate, for he does not know what it could amount to.

"...It was his birthday then - got him an owl - she's a Snowy, an' seems the good sort. Took him to Diagon Alley an' all - yeh shoulda bin at the 'Cauldron tha' day, to see all the stir he caused! Was right proud, I was..."

Hagrid's face has brightened at the memory, and his listener makes the effort to provide him with a slow smile, his chin pressed into his fisted hand as he tries to picture this scene. He feels a sudden rush of fondness towards the Gamekeeper simply for being who he is, and finds himself glad that he is there to look out for Harry during his schooldays.

"Is Snape still the Potions Master here?" he asks with a sudden jolt of recollection and not looking forward to the answer.

Hagrid sighs, and the younger man can feel the gust of his breath even where he sits. "Yeah, and young Harry seems to think he's got it in fer him."

"Wouldn't surprise me," Remus says darkly. Angrily.

"So anyways," says Hagrid in a brighter tone, clearly intent on changing the subject, "I bin thinkin' o' puttin' together sum photographs for him - maybe an album or summat - of his... of Lily and James, I mean," he adds, glancing up anxiously. "So I thought tha' you might have some, seein' as..." He clears his throat loudly, becoming focused on the rough stirring of his tea. The spoon clinks noisily around in the china. "An' it might be a nice present for him, 'cos I dunno if he knows even what they looked like, or nuthin'..."

The spoon falls clumsily from his cup, and it tumbles to the cold tiles by the younger man's foot where it shakes with a clatter and a fading tingling sound.

"Of course," Remus answers quickly, picking up the spoon both to aid Hagrid and in order to avoid his gaze. He now understands why he had written to him. "It's a good idea..."

He fears that this might lead to further discussion of Harry's parents, so he rises from his chair, bringing his cup to the draining board in spite of Hagrid's insistences not to do so. Having donned his scarf and threadbare coat the Gameskeeper reluctantly shakes his hand goodbye and suddenly, enthusiasm illuminating his face, says, "Yeh should meet him - yer stayin' at the Hog's Head, aren't yeh? Why don't yeh just pop down tomorrow an' yeh can..."

But Remus is immediately shaking his head and he moves towards the beautifully cold night air, that rained-upon moss smell hitting him again.

He provides some valid-sounding excuses.

The fact is that he cannot meet him, not right now. The memories are still far too painful, the guilt that he could know him when his father could not, too overwhelming. And too upsetting was this new knowledge of a childhood of suffering - if Remus had not abandoned the situation, then things might have been... different.

Still, as the gates of Hogwarts clang shut behind him, his heart is lifted slightly. The welcome lights of the Gryffindor tower are distant but familiar, and Remus convinces himself that, in spite of his troubles, James' eleven-year-old son is very happy there.

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	3. An Introduction at the Stone Farmhouse

Disclaimer: Anything you recognise is Rowling's, the other stuff is me...

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**Blue by Rockinfaerie**

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**An Introduction at the Old Stone Farmhouse**

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This is where he was born and raised.

It is in a decrepit state; part of the kitchen roof has fallen in and so the house, always prone to damp, has since accumulated years of rainwater in its warped floorboards. Winds have scattered the contents of the one bookshelf about, and he searches for the leather-bound album. After a few moments of kneeling and standing, he summons it impatiently, and it flies to him from a dark corner of the room.

He sits into a cold armchair to examine its condition; the pages stick together and the photographs throughout have blurred, the images now unfocused impressions of what they once were. He rushes through his schooldays and towards the end, to those of his strangely more distant young adulthood, and pauses for a moment on one photograph.

It was taken at their wedding, and it has blurred substantially; the image is watery, as though the two entwined figures are obscured by a waterfall; their photographic selves, holding each other behind this watery screen, are taking advantage of this semi-privacy, for they are kissing. He holds it sadly for a moment, and then puts it back, and draws out the only untainted one of this section; yes, Lily and James are there, holding each other and in love, but so too, disturbingly, is Black... and they all laugh and smile and wave up at him, and he remembers that it had snowed that day, he remembers the way it crunched beneath his feet as he took that photograph.

And he remembers, his gut acidifying, how he had believed Black's lies and smiles... If he had only realised.

But this is the only clear image. He stares at it, holding it away from him, and for an instant strongly resolves to cut the best man from the picture; because of his presence, everything about the image is unsettling. And yet he feels it again, the stolen happiness of that day, the sheer rebelliousness, even - a day of joy in a time of terrible ruin... and vivid details fly back at him; the small flowers falling from Lily's hair, the odd snowball thrown in the churchyard, the slippery stone steps and the secrecy, the intimacy, the laughter, the loyalty...

Or so they had thought.

His eyelids' hot wet rims press against each other. It seems unfair to exclude young Harry from a world that might have been his, and yet cruel to show him that horrible, disturbing juxtaposition of murderer and murdered. But, he now realises, his mind becoming painfully clear, that Harry, too, may one day have to make decisions of extreme significance, and that perhaps, in being aware of the dangers of placing unquestioning trust in one person alone, he might avoid making the same type of terrible mistake as his father, with all its devastating repercussions...

In an instant he has risen, and, before he can dismiss this notion, he envelopes the photograph along with a few others of their schooldays, quickly tying it to the obedient leg of a hired post-owl, and sends it on its way. Then, as he watches its wide wings flap into the horizon, he begins to wonder if he should have done it at all, or if it would have been best to have left it among the sad watery memories of the past.

Then, as he sits down in the darkening room, he hears (with startling clarity) those young voices of the Gryffindor dorm, the unending conversations and jokes that would pass, deepening and evolving - but never departing - from their origins throughout their years at Hogwarts, and his worry is somewhat placated in believing that perhaps Harry may never have to know the same shattering betrayal that was so soon enacted and endured.

The farmhouse, though it has hosted his childhood, does not hold the same comfort as Hogwarts once did - even now, when the memories of school are shadowed by what had come after. His condition had forged a painful distance between him and his parents, and yet, in spite of a number of surrounding and easily accessed rocky fields he had never been allowed to venture far. With no siblings, he had buried himself in books and the stiff keys of his mother's creaking piano. He spies it now, even more damaged than it had been before, in the musty adjoining room, closed over and deadened in the damp darkness. The lid lifts with a slight and dusty thud, and he softly presses what he knows to be an A. No sound is emitted; the instrument ignores him, resentful of years of unexplained neglect by him... or else it senses, perhaps truthfully, that he is frightened of hearing it sing, after all this time. But as he turns away from it he recklessly jams his hand upon several keys at once, and a discord resounds in the still air, against the faded floral wallpaper...

It lingers in his ear as he locks the back door behind him, standing in the grey empty chicken-yard and once more daring to peer through that gauze of pain and into the other world of youth; wading into the freezing school lake until his fingers turned purple and orange, air leaving his mouth in curling puffs of steam, James leading, almost always blissfully unaware that this activity was past the physical endurance levels of his friends... The way they'd all lie for hours on the cold grass and watch the clouds move and change shape, chased by the winds, and Peter would see shapes in them no-one else saw, and the others would scoff, and then the night would darken and they would watch the millions of stars instead, and look so far up into the night that even they became insignificant.

And as he looks up the winding path, now overgrown with untended grass and tiny blue flowers, he can see that a more specific, more recent memory is suggested; he hesitates on the brink of recollection, and then, the happiness of that distant day tempts him and, for all his fear, he cannot resist...

Once more he sees that wobbly wooden picnic table from which he and his friends stood to greet two approaching figures, one of whom would not arrive at his usual high speed because he held his newborn son firmly to his shoulder. So instead they ran to meet this sudden little family, with embraces and inquiries and exclamations, and as they all ambled back up the path towards the house Remus still thought it extraordinary, though he now saw it with his very own eyes, that these two were parents... And around the picnic table of breadrolls and cucumber and tomatoes in dappled August sunlight, the conversation was anchored to the baby, who was passed - with previously unseen levels of caution on his father's part - between the members of the small party. As the evening drew on talk turned, as it often did on these too-rare occasions, to their not-too-distant schooldays - a safe repository of peaceful memories on which to elaborate with increasing maturity and altering perspectives. A refreshing breeze ruffled the tablecloth, and a smiling Lily cradled the recently placated baby, whom she had retrieved from his round of the table (to which he had begun to reasonably object).

As night fell, moths fluttered low over the ignited candles, their distorted shadows looming large across the empty white plates, wings flitting against the half-filled wine glasses. A blue fire was conjured to launch warmth into the increasingly cool air, and Remus rose to get teacups from the kitchen. There, the relaxed voices drifting through the window, he found Lily seated in the armchair, and turned away with awkwardness and apologies on realising that she was feeding the baby. But she laughed at what she deemed to be an overreaction, and her efforts to dispel his obvious embarrassment proved effective enough to continue his progress towards the dresser and take down five mismatching mugs. On finally turning, he saw that she had finished, and she looked up from the now-sleeping face of her son with a grin.

"Would'you like to hold him?" she asked brightly. "You didn't get a chance earlier on."

"Oh - I wouldn't want to wake him..." he immediately began; she narrowed her eyes in smiling refusal to accept his response. "And you know, I don't have any experience with..." He nodded towards the baby.

"Neither did I until three-and-a-half weeks ago," she replied logically, and slowly got up from her seat, shifting her son carefully in her arms. "Now, you sit there, and I'll give him to you - don't worry, I think you might fare a bit better with him than Wormy did!"

Nervous, but curious, Remus complied, and when he was seated in the squashy cushions she passed the baby to him.

"Mind the head."

He nodded and was relieved to see that the baby didn't wake; it continued in its slumber, pillowed in the crook of Remus' elbow, and his minuteness rendered everything about Remus - the span of his hands, the length of his finger - enormous. And still the baby was this alien entity, wrinkled and pink and so different to themselves. The hood of his pale blue baby-robes had slipped down to reveal a little bit of fine dark hair on his scalp, which Remus acknowledged with a chuckle.

"His hair's sticking up!"

She laughed knowingly, sitting on the arm of the chair and reaching down to take her son's hand around her finger, which he gripped reflexively in his sleep. "Yeah... he'll never be able to tame it." James' cheerful voice issued through the thin windowpanes, followed by a burst of mirth from the two others in the garden. "People have been saying that he looks like me, but I see a lot of his dad in him."

"Well, right now he's definitely very like you... though I suppose he'll change quite a bit over the next few months."

Lily murmured her assent. Up close, she was tired and for an instant seemed, though perhaps he imagined it, anxious. But her face brightened before he could fully register what he thought he saw. "He hasn't figured out how to smile yet," she said, turning to Remus with a grin. "But that's supposed to happen soon. For now all he can do is cry and sleep and look around... it must be quite frustrating, being a baby."

"He seems very happy, though," Remus observed sincerely. "He looks so calm and content."

"I think he feels secure there," she said, gently prising her hand away from the baby's astonishingly strong grip and looking back at Remus. Instantly he feared that he would move too suddenly and cause her to retract her comment, but still the baby slept, sometimes twitching his tiny fingers as though to confirm to himself that they were free to move through and grasp at the air.

Moths flew at the window with soft thumps and they talked of other things, as they had done at school and since; their conversation flowed and meandered, slowed and accelerated, jumping between topics or gradually evolving from one to another, often completing the other's sentences or breaking into laughter at a reference implied by their choice of words. All of their conversations seemed to continue from where they had last paused; there rarely seemed enough to say, and yet they would always close abruptly and inexplicably on an unresolved cadence.

When silence fell, Remus looked back at the baby, and once more thought of the absurdity that its very presence constituted. Perhaps his face expressed this idea, or else she had been thinking it herself, for after a moment Lily voiced it quietly.

"It's a bit bizarre, isn't it...?"

He silently expressed agreement, hoping that he wouldn't offend her by doing so.

"We're still in shock," she elaborated amusedly, casting her eyes to her reflection in the darkened window, beyond which her husband and the two others were jesting audibly between themselves. "Before..." she added in a softer voice, "I was scared. You knew I was. _We're_ the kids of the Order. And... there was so much stuff happening and I didn't think it was right to..." she drifted off, her brow furrowing slightly as she concentrated on the baby in Remus' arms. "But now it's..." she lifted a hand to her hair and looked about the kitchen and sighed, before shaking her head. "I can't actually describe it."

He couldn't see her expression as she left the arm of the chair to go to the dresser, and picked up the five mugs Remus had intended to bring outside.

"I'll make the tea, will I?" she then asked without turning around, and he shifted slightly in the chair with the baby and offered to do it instead, but she had already pointed her wand at the kettle and had located the teabags in a jar to the left of the sink. The bubbling and rattling of the kettle caused the baby's eyes to flicker momentarily before they closed shut again. It was astounding, Remus thought as he looked at his little tranquil face, to think of the difference one year had made to their young lives.

Within minutes, a tray was furnished with a full teapot, the mugs, spoons, a sugar bowl and small horizontally-striped jug of milk.

"I'll take that out," he insisted, moving towards the edge of the seat but unsure of how to stand while holding the baby.

Seeing and understanding his predicament, she bent down to gently transfer the sleeping newborn into her arms. "Well, that didn't go so badly after all, did it?" she asked warmly, looking up at Remus.

"No," he conceded, laughing, "it was surprisingly all right!"

"Good to get a bit of practice in before you have kids yourself," she said with a wink, standing up and settling her son against her shoulder. "Now, let's see what schemes those boys outside are coming up with for this one's upbringing!"

He lifted up the tray and followed her out into the dark air, into this balmy August night of moths and fireflies and a familiar ceiling of pinpricked stars, bemused and yet touched by her unimaginable suggestion. Their arrival at the picnic table led to the lengthy conclusion of what was to be the last night of that sort, the last night of innocent schoolboy rowdiness and united contemplation of the arrival of something so new and untainted into that troubled world.

And now he sees the path grown wild and the tumbling brick walls, the broken slates, the kitchen filled with rainwater. There is no warmth in this place. All that laughter, all that joy... are mere echoes in his mind.

But perhaps he will return.

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	4. The ColdBlooded Dawn

Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling

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**Blue by Rockinfaerie**

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**The Cold-Blooded Dawn**

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He wakes up slowly and the morning is soft; he inhales and a cool rush of salty air enters his nostrils

Something is painful and he opens his eyes. Fragments of blue peer through the trembling leaves and the trunks are high and dizzying and look as though they might tumble upon him. Birdsong flutters confusedly through the air and something is salty. He listens for that soothing slap of the waves but it does not come, and with a slight movement he gages something - the aching stiffness in his body, the deep scrapes across his stomach - which he has not experienced for some time. He hears no waves, and yet the salt continues to invade his senses, until he forces himself to sit, wincing, and blearily seeking the calming sea.

But all around him is dense wood, and as that cool rainy mossy smell greets his nostrils he feels both sensations clash horribly; he brings a hand to his mouth in a yawn and on moving it away freezes, staring at the streak of salty blood on his palm. He claps a hand to his mouth again and brings away yet more, and now tastes it flowing from his mouth, and feels the stiffness of his chin where it has dried, and in a mad flurry he gains his feet, twisting about in terror and recognition.

He has bitten someone. This is Hogwarts and he has bitten someone.

He cries out, and in his mind the hallmarks of a transformation - the aches, the scrapes, the memory-void - are all there; it has happened... what has he done? He is shaking and tears at his mouth again. Whose blood does he taste in his mouth? Who has he contaminated - who has he condemned to a life of exile and pain? Or killed? The tattered clothing that remains on his body is wet from the slippery leaves and the twigs crack beneath his bare feet like breaking bones. He forces himself to move - he stumbles beneath sharp blinding branches and his feet slide in the muck of hidden hollows, and with every snapping twig and turn of his head he fears that he will see his mauled victim. He is sobbing in short gasps of breath and his desperation mounts as he reaches the edge of the forest where he sees himself, reflected in the small windowpanes of Hagrid's hut.

There he is in the early morning sun - thin and grey as death in the cold dawn and his face drenched with blood. He steps closer and sees his eyes and questions them, but the taste in his mouth tells him that he is a monster, that he is incurably vile. He grasps the sides of his head as though in an effort to press this unbearable guilt from him, to become once more as he had been last night, to become all he deserved to be: a blank beast of carnage. He looks beyond the glass and at the snoring form of the gamekeeper, and acknowledges immediately that the life of a social outcast is now far too good for him; any life is too good for him... And suddenly he believes the Ministry - the remorse rises bitterly and he believes that he should have been slaughtered long ago, slaughtered to prevent further slaughter. But he looks again beneath those brows in the window, perhaps to confirm to him that there is nothing about him worth retaining.

And he spits at himself; the blood spatters onto his wretched reflected face and his bottom lip stings excruciatingly. His spit dribbles down the window and he peers closer at that mouth, the mouth that tore human flesh.

And then he pauses, a shudder running through him, and stares again... there is a deep gash running through the lower lip, like an aerial view of a dark ravine, and it oozes... and it is the deep cut of teethmarks. He brings his teeth down upon the ruptured tissue and winces, but his bite matches the line directly.

He steps back and views his fingernails. Dirt, but nothing else. His tattered front is scraped, but by wolfish claws and not by human fingers. Looking back at his anxious face, he sees that his nose is clean - no evidence of snout-rummaging into raw meat. He wipes his mouth again and knows suddenly that this is his own fresh blood that he tastes, and his mouth is beginning to swell.

The lake is a silver sheen of early sunlight, and he moves towards it with something between a cough and a laugh, the realisation rising - slowly, cautiously, but determinedly - until he must accept the reality of the situation. He collapses onto the cool grassy bank and settles back, initial relief returning to the shock and horror of what could have been, manifesting itself in a shaky shuddery mantra as he stares at the lightening sky:

"I could've bitten somone... I could've bitten someone... I could've bitten... I could've..."

And the first of the jumbled memories to charge at him from the previous night (before they are ordered by logic), is that they had all been at the Shack. All of them. Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs. And for a confused and fleeting moment he is so filled with this conviction that he jolts and stares transfixed at his pale blue-veined hands and wonders why he has aged.

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**Please leave a review, to let me know what you think.**


	5. Watery Blues and Greens and Flowers

Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling.

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**Blue by Rockinfaerie**

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**Watery Blues and Greens and Flowers**

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"You're not looking. Look at it. Look."

It was pretty. It had pinks and greens and flowers, but most of all it had blue. It had blue water that rippled and reflected and changed into different blues. There was more blue in it than any other colour in the picture.

"I like blue best. Look Mummy."

The picture was shiny. Daddy had gotten it from a magazine on the table. He had used the scissors that was always kept on a high shelf, and gave it to her as a surprise when they were having cornflakes that morning. She was careful not to get milk on it, and ever since she had kept it nice and flat. Once, she folded over the corner, just to see what it would be like with the corner folded. But as soon as she did it she was sorry, and ever since had been trying to hide the damage.

It was a picture by Money. That was what her daddy had said when she flattened it against the wall to get a better look. The water was lovely and swirly and clean, and she imagined that fairies lived there, like the fairies Mummy had told them about from her three books, that were stacked by her bed. She always kept the green one at the bottom, because she didn't like green very much, though she liked the green in the picture by Money.

All day she had looked closely at the picture, so closely that all she could see were the colours and shapes that blurred when she was so close. It was a pretty place with pretty water, and she wondered if her Mummy would let her go near it. There was other water nearby, which was brown and had papers in it, and it was dark and didn't have flowers, and Mummy said never to go there, and when they were out walking she would always make sure that neither of them ever went near there.

All day she had stared at the picture, lying on her tummy and cupping her hands around her eyes and focusing on the Money picture. She didn't go outside. It was cold and a bit rainy, but that wasn't the reason. Mummy had stopped taking her outside, and Mummy's tummy had gotten big and round and she often had to lie down, but never on her tummy.

"Mummy look! Blue is nicer than green."

She was lying down now, on the sagging couch in the little kitchen. Her eyes were closed, but she wasn't sleeping, because it was still nice and bright outside. Her face looked very white and her hair was messy and her tummy looked especially big today, and Petunia knew that if _her_ hair looked like that her Mummy would brush it right away. She tugged at her hand.

"Mummy! Look at the picture!"

Mummy murmured something, and opened her eyes and looked at her. She gave her a small smile, but she didn't say anything. Instead, she raised a hand to Petunia's blonde hair, pushing the straight fringe out of her eyes. Then, seeing that her daughter was holding something for her to take, she accepted the cut-out and settled back against the arm of the couch, glancing at the picture and then at the clock on the cluttered kitchen counter.

"You'll be gettin' a new brother or sister soon, pet," she whispered sleepily, closing her eyes again. She took her hand away from Petunia's and smoothed it over her big tummy. "That'll be nice, won't it?"

"Mummy, d'you like the picture?"

She was worried that it would get crumpled and that her Mummy wouldn't get a chance to see it properly. Mummy opened her eyes again and lifted it to look at it. She smiled that small, soft smile again and sighed.

"Oh pet, It's very pretty. They're lily-pads. Little frogs like to use them as their houses." She looked up at the cracks in the ceiling before closing her eyes again. "Lilies are always very pretty."

Petunia giggled and tried to climb up beside her. There wasn't much room, but the cushions were softer than the floor, which crackled and bent in places. At first Mummy was saying no, that she needed to rest and that when Daddy got home from his work he would read to her about the fairies if she was good, but then she let her stay on the couch, and it was nice and snug between the cushions and Mummy, and she curled up against her, nice and warm and safe in the cold winter house. Her Mummy closed her eyes again and she found the picture and it wasn't crumpled and in this cosy cocoon she looked at it, and because it was dark in the cushions she tried to imagine what it looked like before she closed her eyes too.

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Then Mummy had white powder on her face and blue cheeks and was wearing a long blue dress that flowed and swirled when she moved, and Petunia liked to tug at the huge wide skirt and make it sway. The skirt was so thick that its layers shushed along the dusty wooden floor when Mummy moved, and it was only when she sat down that her tummy looked big again. Rosie fussed over her as she dabbed blue paint on her cheeks and made flowing patterns with her brush on Mummy's face, but Mummy said she didn't worry and said that this would be her last one and anyway it meant finally getting a bit of money and she wouldn't be able to do it again for a while, and that it wasn't due until March, anyway. Petunia hopped and danced along the floorboards, but she didn't let her feet make a single sound.

Traffic rushed on the road outside the big steel door and icy stone steps that they had climbed, and Petunia knew that it would be her bedtime soon, and that Rosie would tell her to curl up in the squashy beanbag in the corner once she had moved the clothes and wigs off it.

Mummy was being a good witch, and her dark hair was plaited and coiled up on her head and it looked pretty, and Rosie said it was held up by magic. There was tinsel in her hair too - Rosie said that she had saved it from her Christmas tree, and Petunia remembered that she had gotten her three books about fairies for Christmas and that they had been wrapped in special gold paper and that she had kept the gold paper as well because it was so pretty.

And then there were lots of other people there and the little room with the big mirror was crowded with people and Mummy was the good witch but there were also some bad witches with long scraggly black hair and she hid behind Mummy but tried to pretend that she wasn't afraid, and they were all saying different things to each other as though they were playing a game made of sentences, and then one by one they left, and Mummy left as well, and suddenly it was so dusty and quiet.

Rosie always took Petunia to the side of the stage and made her promise along the way to stay quiet, and they both stayed still in the shadows and watched the people on the stage, and she could see Mummy but she looked so different under the lights and she often thought she was a different person and didn't believe what Rosie said, and there was singing and the sound of clapping that made Petunia smile, and then Rosie said it was getting late but Petunia didn't mind, because she liked the squashy bean-bag, and she curled up beneath the windowsill of the dark orange-lit street.

Then she heard the sound of many people clapping in the distance like big waving leafy branches, but there were louder worried voices close to her in the room, and she opened her eyes and Mummy was sitting into the plastic chair, moving a lot and speaking quickly, and Petunia stumbled out of the bean-bag and dizzily ran to her, and Rosie was telling people to do things and there were a lot of people running about, and Mummy suddenly hunched over in her witch-dress and closed her eyes and yelled out loud, and Petunia was scared and moved forward to cuddle her, but Mummy didn't seem to notice that she was there. She stayed hunched over and the blue paint was trickling down her cheeks in sharp skinny rivers.

It was raining outside, the wintry rain splashing and plashing against the window, but Mummy had to go outside down the icy steps to the blue flashing lights and Petunia could tell that she was crying silently, the way Petunia had done when she had cut her knee by the swings. And when she was gone, Rosie took Petunia home on the bus instead of Mummy, and no-one came home instead of Daddy, and that night Petunia hid in the cushions of the couch and cried by herself, and she looked at the picture because it was quiet and pretty and had no crying in it, and through her tears the colours blurred even more. And she thought that if she closed her eyes tight enough she could find Mummy and Daddy again and they would go for a picnic with the fairies like the little girl did in the book, and that Mummy the good witch wore her big blue dress and Christmas-tinsel in her plaited hair.

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Mummy and the baby couldn't come home for a long time. Everyone was worried about the baby.

One day, Daddy took her to see the new baby. They went on a big bus with lots of people on it, and she was afraid that she would get squashed. There were wet smelly coats and the engine smoked and growled, and there were orange metal bars with the orange bits peeling away. They stood up on the way there, and she had to hold Daddy's hand all the time because she might fall, and she nearly fell twice.

Then there was a long long white corridor full of people and screams and shouts and she tried to cover her ears but she could only cover one because Daddy wouldn't let go of her hand as she ran alongside him. Then they got to a room, and at first she got scared because she couldn't see Mummy, but then she found her and ran to her to cuddle her, but Mummy looked a bit different and she and Daddy only talked about the baby and the nurses were saying that the baby was doing very well and was a beautiful baby, and Daddy told her that the baby had to stay in a special little baby-house for now until she was ready to come home.

And then Daddy lifted her up onto Mummy's bed, and Mummy cuddled her for a moment and then told her that her new baby sister was called Lily, like the flowers in her picture. Petunia smiled and knew that her picture was safe in the front pocket of her dress, and imagined that the new baby was small enough to carry in her pocket, like the picture. Daddy had brought Mummy some flowers and he put them in a glass of water on the little table beside her bed, but she worried and said that they had cost money, and Petunia pressed the petals between her fingers and they were soft and a bit sticky and she thought of the picture.

They all walked to another room to see the baby, and Mummy put her jacket on over her light blue nightdress because it was cold, and Petunia got tired of walking but Daddy said it wasn't too far away so he didn't carry her. But when they got into the room with the glass baby-houses, Petunia couldn't see what was inside them until Daddy picked her up to show her the glass box he and Mummy were looking at, so that she could look too.

"That's her, pet," Daddy said happily. "There's your little sister."

She was tiny and bald and pink and wrinkly and sleeping... and she didn't look like a flower at all.

After a few minutes Daddy put her back down, and Mummy and Daddy kept looking at the baby and talked about it and talked to it, and Petunia had to stay on the cold floor, between the blank wall and the steel trolley-wheels, and she leaned against Mummy's leg and shivered and took out the picture again, and the room was full of faint baby-cries, and Petunia almost cried a little bit herself, but Mummy and Daddy didn't see.

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Everyone made a fuss when the baby came home. Mrs Murphy and Mrs Jones and Mrs Biggs crowded around and talked about how pretty she was, and that she looked like Mummy. Petunia didn't think the baby looked like Mummy at all.

Mummy said that Petunia had to help her and Daddy look after the baby by being good, but Petunia thought the baby was a bit boring and silly, and Mummy or Daddy was always holding it anyway. And she was always being told to shhh when the baby was sleeping, even though she wasn't making any noise.

And when Rosie came to see the new baby after it had come home, she brought a present for it - a little rag-doll with tinsel hair in a blue witch-dress. Petunia suddenly saw that now the baby had a doll and she had none, and Rosie suggested that Petunia could mind the rag-doll until the baby was old enough to play with it. Petunia nodded at her smiling face, but secretly, proudly, refused. She had her picture which she had kept safely in the front pocket of her dress. It was more special than a silly doll.

Still, sometimes when no-one was looking, she would pick up the witch rag-doll and rock it the way Mummy rocked the baby, and sometimes tried to sing it the same songs. Sometimes she imagined that the rag-doll could come on the fairy-picnics too. Then the baby got older and no longer needed to be rocked as much, and Petunia was impressed when she learned to sit up by herself, and found it funny at first when she kept toppling over onto her forehead. Mummy and Daddy were always very proud whenever the baby learned anything new like this. Sometimes, though, the baby liked to grab Petunia's hair and wouldn't let go, and Petunia would cry and try to make it stop and Mummy would get cross and tell her to be gentle and pick the giggling baby up and Petunia's head would stay sore.

Then, the baby got to stay at home with Mummy when Petunia started school, and every morning she cried silently by the railings and concrete wall as she watched Mummy leave the school gates and push the buggy up the hill, and was always careful to hide the Money picture safely in the pocket of her pinafore so that she would have something nice to look at during the day. And sometimes she couldn't talk to the other people around her, and so she took out her crayons and paper and got lost in a world of watery blues and greens where fairies and frogs lived and everything was nice and peaceful and free.

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**This story will alternate at times between Remus and Petunia - please review to let me know what you think - opinions are appreciated!**


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